Lifelines
by Trillian4210
Summary: The Exile, Lysia Tors, has no memory of the Mandalorian Wars she fought in until she meets an Iridonian tech who can't let them go. Three chapter 'oneshot' from the request a fic. BaoDurXExile.
1. Part I

**A/N: This fic is almost entirely based on the game dialogue that takes place between Bao-Dur and the Exile. I read it and decided there was a story in there and so here it is, in response to my forum challenge.**

**Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but to Obsidian and Lucas Arts, and the aforementioned dialogue was not written by me…I've just appropriated for my own selfish use. ;) **

**Warning: Some material may not be suitable for younger audiences and there were two f-bombs in there last I counted.**

**Thanks are owed to: VaguelyFamiliar for providing the nearly all of Bao-Dur's game dialogue. I had a completely different story in mind until she did that, so thanks to her for the inadvertent inspiration and for taking the time in the first place. **

**To Alexandra3 for motivating me with a deadline.**

**To Elena the Eccentric for the suggestion. I was waiting for that!**

**And to my beta-reader Miss Becky, who tackled the fact that I had decided to do alternating tenses midway through my first draft and she caught every word I missed. Also, a million years ago, I promised her a Bao-Dur fic so this one is dedicated to her. Love ya!**

**Okay, I'll shut up now. Enjoy.**

Lifelines Part I Prologue… 

The last thing I remember clearly is deciding to go to war. Everything after that is shot to hell.

It was Malachor V, of course, that ruined my memory, and me playing fun and games with a little contraption called the mass shadow generator. Thought I could end the war, you see. Thought I was being merciful, for frack's sake. Turns out I was half-right, but it cost me. I blew my own memory apart as surely as I tried to blow that gods-forsaken planet out of the ether. So now, all that remains of the Mandalorian Wars are fragments—bits and pieces that I cannot, for the life of me, connect to anything else.

Four years of my life are compressed into a few choice moments of violence and explosions and loud noises, so that when I think on them, I invariably spill hot caffa on my lap or choke on my cigarra smoke. Those memories don't so much as swim benevolently to the surface of my consciousness as they jump out at me—teeth bared and itching for a fight. I have no particular fondness for those visions; I can't fathom why my psyche has kept them around and booted everything else out—stuff that I wouldn't mind having a sliver or two of.

I can't remember if I had friends or took lovers, played sabacc, drank too much or gambled my pay away like I did during my exile. I can't remember sharing a laugh with a soldier during a moment of downtime. I don't know if I liked the chow or had to choke it down. I can't remember if I was ever praised by a superior or reprimanded by one. I don't know if I was a good general or not—if I was the kind of officer that made men and women cringe when they saw me walking by, or if they whispered snidely behind cupped hands…or if they silently vowed they would follow me to the end of the galaxy and back. All of those memories are gone and instead I have the sound of shrapnel ripping along the armor of my transport and the snap of a twig behind me that reveals a heavy-footed Mandalorian stalking me in a jungle.

Unnerving too, is that right after the war, the face in the mirror that stared back at me was somehow four years older than when I last saw it. Not that anyone else would notice. I have a perpetually youthful face for having made it to thirty, and I'm as short as a fourteen-year-old girl. I have narrow blue eyes and straight black hair that brushes my shoulders. My face is paler than I'd like but hey, I can't have everything. At this point, all I want is ten minutes of a memory that doesn't cause me to twitch like a spice junkie needing a fix.

I did it to myself, I know. The effects of the mass shadow generator were worse than I could have ever possibly imagined and, of course, I remember every millisecond of that experience. It blasted me down to my center, like an ion grenade tossed into a well that just keeps falling deeper and deeper until finally exploding somewhere in the core of my mind. It was the screams, I think. The sound of a hundred thousand voices screaming in agony and protest as they were torn from their bodies. I ripped myself away from the Force in order to silence them, to protect myself from that ion blast of a massacre that roared through me again and again, until I thought I surely must have fallen to someplace lower even, than the dark side.

In retrospect, I'm lucky I only lost the four years.

After the war, with my memory shot, the Fleet cut me loose. I got an honorable discharge since my amnesia had made me 'unfit for service.' So I'm not a general anymore. I'm not a Jedi anymore, either, for obvious reasons. I'm not much of anything. A ghost, maybe. A shade, or a shadow that is burned onto the sidewalk after a thermal detonator turns the body into ash. I want to die but there is no death, only the Force and I sure as hell can't have that.

I'm an exile from my own life so I figure I may as well return to the Council and make it official.

I expect it to hurt. It does, but not as badly as my discharge from the Republic. I can only guess that means I enjoyed being a general more than I did being a Jedi, but honestly, who the hell knows.

I have flashes of my trial and the stern/ compassionate/unrelenting faces that exiled me. I remember jabbing my blue-bladed lightsaber into the gut of the statue. I know the Council thinks I did it out of defiance. Wrong. It was just a little show-and-tell; a silent performance piece because I can't tell them what I really feel and I can't ask them for help. It's my bunk and I just have to lie in it. What right do I have to ask them for anything, anyway?

After the trial, that holovid of my life picks up again and the ribbon of my memory becomes whole and unbroken, until I purposefully try to tear it apart with spice and booze so that I won't have to remember that I can't.

Odd jobs come and go, as do the days, nights, men, some women too, until those years of my exile become as blurry a mess as the war years. I wait to feel something that will spark my memory, but nothing ever does. If you ask me what I really did during that time I would say I spent it glancing at strangers, searching for a connection or recognition that I foolishly thought would jumpstart everything again. But I was stuck with the bits and pieces, and the strangers just looked away like strangers do.

Eventually, the ghost that is me drifts aimlessly, like so much discarded spacejunk until I finally wake up in a kolto tank on mining facility where the dead don't stay dead, and where pain is a living, breathing thing. I meet the old woman with her secrets and plans. I meet the pilot with his glib tongue and shifty eyes, and listen with amusement as he introduces himself to my chest. Soon after, I realize that my little escapades on Malachor V did not go unnoticed—cosmically speaking— and so the three of us begin our quest to put the poor broken Jedi back together again. I have little hope it will help me recover what I had lost, but I have to start trying. Frack the Force, I just want my life back.  
And then we land on Telos and I look into a stranger's eyes and this time he doesn't look away, and something long asleep in me begins to stir.

Telos… 

"Good to have you back, General."

I opened my eyes despite the protest of my aching skull, and glanced around. I smelled smoke and heard the sounds of licking flames and thought for a second that the war had come back to me. I jumped to my feet, my hand reaching for my blaster, but there was only the burning wreckage of the transport we picked up from the TSF station behind me and an Iridonian Zabrak standing in front of me.

He was tall—but then most people are tall to me—and well-built. Though he wasn't holding a weapon, I knew instantly that he could and had. He'd fought before and fought well. There is something in a person's eyes that can tell you if they've seen or dealt a lot of death, and his brown eyes were full up with it. A remote droid hovered over his left shoulder and I could hear the hum of the energy that powered the Zabrak's left arm. At my feet, Kreia and Atton lay unconscious.

"Easy now," the Zabrak continued, as I aimed my hold-out at him. "You survived one spectacular crash. Lucky I was here to pull you and your friends out of that shuttle or you'd be more than a little crispy."

I nodded absently, but didn't hear the Zabrak's words. A dizzying, twisting sensation of displacement came over me. I knew that my feet were still on the ground next to Atton's head on the green grass plains of Telos, but I was somewhere else too.

It was his voice. It sounded so jarringly familiar. And not just the we've-spoken-once-or-twice familiar, but familiar like I've heard that voice in a hundred different tones and variations before—laughing, whispering, raised in anger and lowered in warning. I _knew _that voice, but my broken memory wouldn't make any connections. And the Zabrak was looking at me like he knew me and then some. He looked at me as though he'd been waiting for something, like a lift home that seemed like it would never come, and now it was here. He looked at me as though he were satisfied and settled somehow—not all the way, but a little bit more and my feeling of displacement increased.

"Where am I?" I asked, and I didn't mean Telos.

The Zabrak's easy smile slipped a little and I knew it was because he was expecting me to say something else, his name maybe. But I didn't know his name, and so his gladdened expression failed a bit.

"You must be in shock from the crash. Have to expect some long term memory loss from that."

He said something more to the remote hovering over his shoulder, but all I heard was those two magic words I wanted to hear them again. "What did you say?" I demanded.

He eyed me with a peculiar expression on his face. "I said, after a crash like that, I'd expect some long term memory loss," he said.

I nodded. "Who are you?"

He flinched as though I'd slapped him, but recovered quickly. "I'll humor you, General," he said bitterly. "I was one of the Iridonian mechanic corps that was at Malachor. Bao-Dur? I can see how you'd forget me, being that I was the only one." The sarcasm in his voice was hard to miss, and laced with pain, but I only heard his name.

_Bao-Dur. _Like his voice, I _knew _that name. I didn't remember how I knew it, but I knew that I'd spoken it a thousand times, shouted it, whispered it, and—Force help me—somehow I knew I'd had it expelled from me in a gasp of ecstasy…more than once.

I looked at Bao-Dur then and he looked at me. I could feel him willing me to drop whatever charade he thought I was playing, and I was trying so hard to _make_ my fractured memory whole again…but I could not and then Atton and Kreia came around and we all had to get down to business.

Three days, one brief incarceration in the Secret Academy, and four Echani duels later, we had the _Ebon Hawk _back and I had time to ponder this new development. I locked myself into the starboard dormitory for the entire duration of the jump to Nar Shaddaa and tried to remember this Iridonian, but it was useless.

I wanted to go to the garage and talk to him but I couldn't do that. I couldn't explain my memory loss—it was hardly believable in my own mind—and I couldn't force it on him, either. Already, in the short time I'd known him, I didn't want to hurt him. If it was true that we had had more than a casual acquaintance before, I thought it would probably sting a bit if I talked to him like he was a stranger. It would've stung me.

So I stayed in my bunk and tried to figure it all out. Didn't happen. But that night I had a dream that was much more than a dream, and the pieces of my shattered memory started to come together.

"_General Lysia Tors, this is your new mission crew," the ensign says, pointing to each of the men and women in turn who are lined up before me. "Lt. Goran will be your Second, and then you've got privates Agris, Taen, Shmei, and Faldoon. Oh, and your med droid, M5-D6 and your tech," he adds like an afterthought. _

"_My tech. Has he got a name?" I demand of the ensign. _

"_Huh?" the young man asks, distracted, as he was already turning his attention to my equipment manifest. He peered at the Iridonian tech standing beside the med droid. "Uh, I suppose…"_

"_Bao-Dur," the Zabrak says, speaking without having been addressed. His voice is soft and smooth, a contrast to the cacophony from the noisy base around us. "Name's Bao-Dur, General," he adds but doesn't salute._

_I've only been in the service for three months but I quickly came to realize that I'm not one to tolerate guff from inferiors, nor do I appreciate it when a private shows 'moxie' or 'guts.' Save that shit for the field, I say, and salute your officers, dammit. But for some reason I feel a smile trying to pull at my lips. _

"_Are you a good tech or are you just filling a vacant post because you can handle a hydrospanner better than the man next to you?" I ask. _

_  
Bao-Dur meets my eyes unflinchingly instead of focusing on some point above my head as most of the soldiers do when I am addressing them. "I'm good, General. Some would even say I'm half machine."_

_It is on the tip of my tongue to say that he looks all man to me, but that's not likely to engender the kind of officer/soldier relationship I'm trying to cultivate. So I bite my lip instead and say, "Glad to hear it, but can you handle a blaster too? We're going to need every man we have, because it's going to get real interesting around here, real quick."_

_Bao-Dur nods, an intensity in his eyes that looks like something I've seen in my own. "I'm counting on it."_

_A variety of Jedi-like admonitions about not letting one's emotions get the better of one come to mind, but then I remember that it was only three standard weeks ago that the last of the Iridonian colonies fell to the Mandalorians on the Outer Rim so I hold my tongue._

"_Carry on then, Bao-Dur," I say, and make to turn away when his soft voice stops me. _

"_I will and thank you, General."_

_The others in line beside him twitter or shift nervously. I give them an eyeful and they instantly go still. "What did you say?" I ask, stepping closer to the tech. _

"_I said, thank you, General. You came when others did not," he says, still looking right at me. "Other Jedi, I mean."_

_"I know what you mean," I say abruptly. No one at Fleet Headquarters, or anywhere else for that matter, had thanked me for leaving the Order, for turning traitor to the Council, mostly because I wouldn't let them. I don't want to be reminded of where I came from. I just want to do the job and win so that I can feel like it was worth it all. But for some reason I like hearing it from him._

"_Don't mention it," I say in a low tone and Bao-Dur smiles faintly. It's then I realize this conversation has gone on longer than proper. The ensign apparently comes to the same conclusion. _

"_Now, General Tors, if you would come with me to the equipment shed, we'll get you outfitted and stocked."_

_I dismiss my team and as I move to follow the ensign, I meet Bao-Dur's eyes. I nod my head at him once, and he salutes me in return, a hint of a smile touching his lips. Something passes between us then. I don't know what it is; I don't examine it with the Force. The second I stepped onto the transport on Dantooine, using the Force became a no-no and only reminds me that I am a traitor, so I shelve it and try to figure my feelings out like a regular person would. Surprise, surprise, that doesn't work. As the ensign drones on about my armor, weapons, tent location and credit allowance, I am thinking about a little smile and those brown eyes. _

_I settle into my new quarters and begin my command over my regiment. __The days begin to blend together in a tiring routine of drills, drills, and a few more fracking drills. Whatever it was that passed between Bao-Dur and I on that first day remains undefined but that becomes okay as soon as I make the decision to keep the tech around me as much as possible. I get to know him, discreetly, for it's unseemly for an officer to spend so much time with the grunts, so to speak. _

_I learn that the Mandalorians wiped out his entire clan and he's pretty sure his planet is gone too. I learn that he has a smooth, intelligent sense of humor that can be biting or sweet depending on his mood. I learn that when he and I are together, the war doesn't seem so hard to confront and that I truly want to see what future lies after it. But mostly I learn that that undefined sensation that passed between us only gets stronger with every passing day until I can practically see an energy field between us. I long to touch him,__but I'm almost afraid I'll get shocked. And when battle comes, he is at my side and I feel safe, no matter how bad things get. _

_I quickly come to rely on that feeling of safety. I relish it. But my greatest joy is that I sense in him, through the Force, that I make him feel the same way. _

I woke up that morning with a smile on my face and whistled tunelessly as I cleaned up and got dressed. My good mood was something of an anomaly, but wholly attributed to Bao-Dur. Somehow, meeting him again sparked my memory. I wanted to go to him and thank him, but it still seemed too strange. I couldn't recreate the friendship we had so long ago. The two of us couldn't just slip into our old skin so fast, if at all. There was too much yet left unknown, but it was a start. And after ten years of the war being reduced to bursts of sound that made me shake and visions that were wet with blood, that small start was good enough for me.


	2. Part II

**Part II **

**The day after Dxun…**

I caught Bao-Dur talking to Mical and Visas about me in the garage. I couldn't hear anything in particular except for the two words that jump out at me from the crowd of words in a conversation every time. He was asking them about my memory loss. I listened closer and heard his low, melodic voice ask if it's real and how bad it is. But Mical and Visas don't know. No one on the ship does because, as my first Jedi Master once said, 'If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem.' Mical and the Miraluka and all the rest of them were not part of the solution. I heard enough yapping about my wound and my exile and my lack of credibility with a certain Jedi Council to last a lifetime; I didn't need to add pointless questions about my post-war souvenir into the mix too.

But then I heard him ask—or more aptly, wonder aloud—why? He was hurt that I didn't remember him and he wanted to know why. _So do I, _I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him, too, that if anyone _was _part of the solution, it was him, but I couldn't. There was too much going on with our present quest and the feeling that it would still be terribly awkward remained. Everything I was supposed to know about him was hanging between us.

I walked away from the garage before any of them could notice me with the Force.

The Force. It was everywhere now. Against my better judgement—and very nearly against my will—it was coming back to me, tentatively, cautiously, as though it was afraid of getting hurt again. And not just me. It seemed everyone around me could feel it too. Mira, Atton, Mical and even Bao-Dur. Kreia said it's because of me, because of my wound. I 'influence' people. My decisions are not mine alone, but somehow a joint affair where I can't even pick which set of robes to wear or how much sugar I want in my caffa in the morning without it affecting someone, somewhere on this damn freighter.

Later that night, as Atton plotted the hyperspace route that would take us to Onderon, I crashed into Bao-Dur on my way to my dorm. I rounded the corner and there he was. Being as short as I am, my face collided squarely into his chest and I felt his hands—one warm and real, the other humming mechanically—on my shoulders to steady me.

"Hi," I said, rubbing my nose. From the first I had admired how hard his chest appeared under his tight, dark green shirt. I wondered if that was residue from whatever he and I were during the war, or if it was new. This close up, my nose smarting from the collision, I decided it wasn't really subjective anyway. His body was magnificent, and that was just a fact. I glanced up into his face and my superficial thoughts fled and my heart hammered in my chest. _Who was he to me? _I wondered. _And is he still…?_

"I'm glad I found you again, General," he said, interrupting my thoughts.

"Well, this ship is only so big…" I said, with a short laugh he didn't join in on. His expression grew dark and I cleared my throat. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know how you do it. Aren't you bothered by him?"

"Him?" I ask. I plucked the image of Mandalore out of his mind and felt a scowl of frustration emerge onto my face. I don't know what I was expecting him to say to me, but talking about Mandalore was pretty far down on my list.

Bao-Dur regarded me intently and said slowly, "Traveling with him…It brings back too many memories."

I saw what he was doing then, trying to help me, and my scowl slipped. "Consider yourself lucky," I said, my voice betraying me.

A small, sad smile, touched his face, softening it even more under the contrasting sharpness of the horns that jutted from his head.

"There's nothing, General?" he asked, an echo of the conversation I overheard earlier.

"Yeah," I replied. "Nothing."

He nodded and I felt him come to some sort of decision. I hoped it didn't involve him giving up on me but I wasn't good enough with the Force yet to tell.

"I didn't want to talk about the war, but can I ask you something?"

"Sure," I shrugged. "Can't promise I'll have an answer."

"Why did you decide to fight?"

"The Mandalorians had to be stopped."

"Anything else?"

"No, not that I can recall off the top of my head," I snapped. I felt tears spring to my eyes but I willed them away. Not fair, I thought, that he knew all of it and I didn't, and I no longer cared if it was awkward to talk about or not. "What about you?" I demanded. "Why did you fight? Or did we already cover this at some point?"

He appeared as though he hadn't heard my anger and was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. Then he said, "I remember when word of the Mandalorian attacks arrived on Iridonia. My people had colonies across the Outer Rim. Many of them were the first systems to fall."

Behind his words I heard that we had, indeed, covered this topic before, but I wanted to know him, even if I had to start all over again.

"So you wanted revenge?" I asked in a low tone.

His eyes studied me, boring intently into mine. In the dim light of the corridor, his arm was the brightest illumination, giving his gray skin a silvery cast.

"Yes, General, I fought for revenge. I did not join to protect. I hated the Mandalorians. I wanted to destroy them—to give them the _mercy_ they gave the people they conquered."

Bao-Dur's voice grew low and intense and he unconsciously took a step toward me, backing me against the corridor of the _Hawk. _I felt that energy between us, like what we had when we first met and my pulse quickened.

"I remember the thrill I felt when we fought them in battle. Victories were rare, but we celebrated every Mandalorian's death. Do you know how it felt? Do you remember, General?"

He was pressed against me now, his right hand flat against the wall beside my head, his left arm held at bay so that it wouldn't burn me. I could feel him urging me to remember, to rekindle some kind of shared ideal between us, but all I could manage was desire for him. Which was considerable.

"I-I don't remember," I whispered.

"That loss of control," he continued, "it turned me into a weapon. It did the same to you, General, but we fought back, the two of us. After the last cup was raised and drunk and the lights were out, we celebrated. You and me."

"We did?" I asked, my voice no more than a whisper.

He nodded.

"How?"

His response was to kiss me, which is exactly what I was hoping for when I asked that question in the first place.

His lips were soft but insistent, and I parted mine readily for him. The warm, heavy stone of my desire settled into my lower belly and I pressed myself against him. I ran my hands over his chest and he took that as a cue to do the same. His hand, his real hand, slipped over my robe and then inside it to cup my breast. I was overcome by a duality of sensations—the thrill of a first kiss, a first touch, and the safe, comforting caresses of a customary lover. Bao-Dur was new and yet familiar to me at the same time.

I didn't know why, exactly, but I expected everything to be come together at that moment. I braced myself for the flood of memories that were sure to add to the trickle that begun when I first met him on Telos. Nothing happened. There was just he and I in that little hallway and my memories remained AWOL. I stiffened and pulled away.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be," he murmured, moving toward me again, but I backed away. The pain in his eyes irritated me. Aloud I said harshly, unfairly, "I don't even _know_ you."

That shot hit its mark and I snapped my jaw shut, too late.

"Yes, you do, General," Bao-Dur replied softly, his voice tight. He began walking away, then, towards the port dorm, or maybe to his garage. "You have to. We saved each other."

That night, as I lay in my bunk, a thousands thoughts and sensations warred within me. I turned Bao-Dur's last words over and over in my head, but they made no sense, and the taste of his mouth on mine was more real than any of the words we exchanged anyway. My hand crept down to finish what he and I started in the hallway, but sleep, somehow, claimed me quick. But that turned out to be all right; the memories that were revived in my dreams were a thousand times better than anything I had planned for myself.

_It rains on Dxun nearly every hour. The lush, green foliage is everywhere and there's water in the hot air. Insects chirp and hum and buzz in a symphony of raw, instinctual music, their discordant harmonies swimming around us until that rain comes. Then the only sound is the patter of thousand drops on the broad, flat leaves…and against the armor of my helmet. _

_Crouching low, I make a furtive gesture with my hand, once, then twice. Instantly, soldiers, their armor a green camouflage, detach themselves from the scene around me and take up the positions I ordered. Bao-Dur is on my right. He is always on my right. Out here, in hot, thick air, I breathe easier when he is beside me. Hell, even in base camp, in the chow line, during drill runs—I am happier with him beside me. When he is off repairing some damaged valve or turbo-lift or any of a thousand other tasks that require his expertise, I become annoyed, uneasy. I snap at my men more than usual. People are starting to talk about us behind my back, but I don't care. We haven't broken any rules, I just feel safer when he's around. If the price of that security is a petty rumor or two, I gladly pay it. _

_Beside me on my left is Private Faldoon. Faldoon is a short, ebon-skinned soldier who tells the most obscenely filthy jokes as if he were describing the weather. I liked him instantly and so he's always on my left…until the Mandalorians roar out of the green in front of us and then Faldoon's blood smatters my face and helmet like the rain. _

_I scream in protest and my repeater screams with me. __Those sounds serve as our battle cry—my orders for my men to attack. But they don't need any incentive. The Mandalorians are pouring out of the forest, stepping out of their stealth field generators like phantoms slipping into corporeal skin. _

_All around me are the sounds of blasters firing, men screaming in death or in bloodlust. The green foliage is crushed under booted feet, splattered with blood, and torn apart by our weapons. The Mandalorians are bolder than any other enemy I have ever faced. They don't take cover like we do, but march steadfastly ahead, mowing down any who get in their way. _

_I think that this is the end, that this battle is going to finish me, but then I feel a burning sensation in my stomach, as though I'd swallowed a smoldering ember. At first, I honestly think I've been shot, but then I recognize it as the same intense feeling of absolute rage that I felt when word of the first Mandalorian attacks came to Dantooine. _

_A ragged, primal scream tears out of me and I lift my repeater to my cheek. Every Mandalorian who comes within my sights is felled by it…or the repeater blasting next to me. A quick glance to my right shows me Bao-Dur. He is roaring with the same kind of ferocity that tells me he has the rage burning in him too. His normally serene face is a mask of hatred and for the first time, I really see the sharp points of his horns, and the way his tattoos stand out, stark and black on his pale face. Every squeeze of his trigger is for Iridonia. Mine is for those who have not yet fallen. To me, every dead Mandalorian is a score of his victims spared, and both Bao-Dur and I do not stop firing until the jungle is still and silent, and the rain puddles are red with the blood of our enemies. _

_But my anger is not sated, it only burns hotter and brighter for our victory and I mutter the Code, mostly because I know it's what I'm supposed to do in a time like this, but it doesn't help. I am less a Jedi every day. I glance at Bao-Dur and see the same fire burning in his eyes. My mumbling of the Code becomes a curse because even in victory, there is no relief for either of us. _

_That night, the regiment celebrates our victory. Tankards of Tarisian ale are clashed together to spill their frothy contents down the arms of celebrants. Someone is playing a Kloo horn, someone else has pulled a female into his arms and so there is dancing. A bonfire is lit and the light of the flames cast dancing shadows over the base and color the faces of my men and women gold and red. _

_My regiment hails me for leading them to victory. I salute them in return for making their stand and showing the Mandalorians that Dxun has not yet fallen. I do not say that the battles are done and the jungle moon is ours. They know that truth—that battle will come again and the victory we have stolen today is one small, bright spot in a canopy of black space. We can't hope to hold Dxun much longer, but we did today, and that's all that matters. We are alive. We may not be tomorrow, but tonight belongs to us. _

_With these thoughts in my head, I find Bao-Dur standing off to the side, alone, as is his wont. He sips from his tankard watching the fire, and I see him savoring what he can out of this victory, even if his voice does not join those shouting our triumph to the night._

_I approach him and he says nothing, but when I meet his eyes, my legs go weak and rubbery at the look in them. _

_"General," he says in that silky voice that is utterly unique to him. _

_"Why don't you ever call me by my name?" I ask, stepping closer to him. _

_"Because you're my general," he says. _

_"Not tonight," I hear myself reply. _

_As soon as those words leave my mouth, he tosses aside his ale and hauls me towards him. My heart is pounding and I am so conscious of his nearness, I forget everything else. All these weeks of long conversations and chaste moments of friendship between us are suddenly not enough. I want more—I want him— and so when he kisses me hard, urgently, I don't fight it. I kiss him back, tasting the ale on his lips and tongue, and feeling his muscular arms wrap around my waist._

_My hands travel up his broad shoulders and to the back of his head. I touch one of his horns, running my palm over it, and he moans into my mouth. His kisses become almost violent and I can't stand the feel of my armored vest against his chest. I want his skin on mine, I want to feel the blood coursing through him and his heart pumping in time to my own. _

_I take him by the hand and we sneak hurriedly through the base. Most everyone but a few sentries are taking part in the revelries, and though my desire is making me careless, I'm still wary enough to keep us from getting caught. It's not allowed, what we're about to do, and though I spend my days barking orders and rules at my men and expect them to be followed without question, tonight I am going to break them. The rules, the Code, everything is meaningless compared to the warm, strong hand that's holding mine as we run. _

_Inside my tent, our clothes are stripped away and I lay back on my bunk, drawing him down on top of me. I feel the weight of him, and my arms wrap tightly around his neck, holding him to me. Every part of him is big and thick and heavy, and I'm glad of it. I need the contact of another life—I need the irrefutable presence of him pressed to me and inside me, so that the terrible hollow ache will go away, if only for these few stolen moments. _

_He moves slowly at first and then faster, until it's all I can do to keep from crying out in ecstasy. But I can't cry out because if anyone heard us, we'd both be sent to the stockade and then he'd be taken away from me. Instead, I gasp his name and feel his pleasure, both physical and emotional, surging over me. He is pleased to hear me breathe his name and he kisses me long and hard until it is over, and then we lie with our limbs entwined and our skin bathed in sweat. _

_In the wee hours before dawn, he doesn't say anything as he dresses to leave. I don't say anything either, but lie still and watch him go, my body aching pleasantly and missing him already. _I_ miss him too, but the next night he returns…and the night after, and the night after that. He slips into my tent through the back long after lights out, and stays until just before first dawn. Sometimes we fuck with no word or further ado, me bent over the footlocker and he with a secure grip on my hips. Other times, he is gentle with me, sliding into bed beside me and laying kisses up and down my spine until I am half out of my mind for him. I don't care either way, gentle or hard, I just want him. I need him. Bao-Dur is the one solid, real thing I have in this whirling chaos of war. _

_In an environment where life is snuffed out on a daily basis, it's the nights with him that remind me I am still alive. _

I woke with a start and banged my head on the bunk above mine. Visas was in it, sleeping soundlessly while Mira tossed and turned restlessly on the other side, but neither woke with me. Rubbing my forehead and muttering a curse, I drew on my outer robe and crept out of the dorm.

The Force told me I would find him in the garage. I stood in the doorway, watching him. His artificial arm cast a blue-white glow, and looking at it I realized that for all the memories that were returning, I still had a long way to go. But at least now, I thought, I had some firmer ground to stand on. Thanks to him.

"Bao-Dur," I said, and he turned. His remote beeped some sort of greeting, I supposed. I couldn't be sure since, like its creator, it couldn't manage to say my name either.

"I didn't see you there, General," Bao-Dur said, his thick voice low with fatigue. He must have been awake a long while, working here, I realized. _It's time for him to go to bed._

I stepped into the room and he put the hydrospanner he'd been working with on the table. _He knows I know now,_ I thought, but thinking, right then, was not terribly important.

"I remember Dxun," I said. "I remember us."

The smile that came to his face was beautiful but fleeting. "There's more, General," he said. "My arm, your wound. That Force-forsaken machine I built."

"Sssh," I admonished. "I know. But let's just celebrate this small victory for now," I said, slipping into his arms.

"Just you and me, like we used to."


	3. Part III

**Part III**

**En route to Malachor V….**

I couldn't put it off anymore. I'd waited for two weeks for the rest of my memories to come rushing back, but no matter how many nights I spent with Bao-Dur, they did not return. Finally, one morning, as Atton steered us to Malachor V and events that had occurred on the _Ravager_ were still hanging over me, making me surly, I asked bluntly, "What happened to your arm?"

He glanced at me sharply, but he must have felt or read the apprehension in my eyes for his expression softened. It was in his eyes too, and I knew it was because we screamed through space toward that hated planet where all things bad and painful seemed to reside. He glanced down at his arm. The electrical energy was off so as not to burn my bare skin in the cramped confines of his bunk. The disembodied hand piece looked like nothing more than a heavy, specialized glove lying on the sheet.

"I got tired of it—kept dropping my hydrospanner. Figured I'd get a new one."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I was there, wasn't I?"

"Yes, General," he sighed. "But if you were me, you'd probably want to joke about it, too. And you look like you could use a laugh." He brushed a lock of my hair out of my eyes.

"So do you," I returned. "Something on your mind?"

If they gave out awards for most moronic question of all time, I would have won it with that one, hands down. Of course, _Malachor V_ was on his mind. How could it not be? We could both practically feel it draw nearer, could feel the weight of its legacy of pain and death. It was like the _Hawk_ was a submersible that kept diving deeper and deeper into the depths, and the weight of an ocean was pressing in against us.

"Returning here," he said. "It's harder than I thought. The anger in me, I can still feel it." He looked at me and I saw the fear in his eyes, plain as day. "Maybe you're lucky you can't remember. The last years of my life have been defined by anger… The Mandalorians, Czerka and Revan. And above all else, for myself, for Malachor."

My throat threatened to close on me but I persevered. "What about me, for giving the order?"

He shook his head vehemently and the fear was burnt out by a smoldering intensity I had only seen him wear on Dxun. "Never, General. It had to be done. My hands destroyed the Mandalorians. I cannot be forgiven for that."

There was a giant contradiction there—a flaw in his logic but it was much too early in the morning for me to grasp it.

Bao-Dur got up then, and pulled on his black pants and shirt and then went to turn on his arm. Attached to the stump, midway between where his elbow would be if he had one, and his shoulder, was the cybernetic generator. He leveled it at the hand piece that was lying beside me on the bunk like a disembodied glove. I watched him power up his arm and the blue-white currents found the hand. He flexed it a few times, experimentally. Through this whole process, I sat in silence, not sure what it was I could say. I didn't remember giving him the order to activate the mass shadow generator. I didn't remember those last moments before I made the biggest mistake of my life, so I didn't know how to tell him it wasn't his fault. Why would he believe me? At that moment, because of my memory loss, I hadn't even _been_ there. But I had to say something.

"Guilt is not your best color," I said with a smile. He didn't return it.

"My guilt reminds me that I have not fallen," he replied, sitting on the edge of the bunk and pulling on his boots.

I sighed and hugged my knees to my chest.

"I know you haven't fallen," I said, nudging him in the side with my bare foot. "Guilt is just something you use to hide from your true responsibility." Tact, as was well demonstrated with that little number, was not my strong suit.

He looked sharply at me and I could feel, through the Force, the anger he spoke of. It coursed through him like hot oil through his veins, burning white and red. "Is that why we're returning to Malachor? To change the future?" he asked, sarcasm thick in his soft voice. It sounded out of place. He let it go and said, "What you say might be the truth, but I don't see it that way. I can't just ignore the blood on my hands."

He stood up and headed for the door. I jumped out of the bunk, heedless of my utter lack of clothing.

"Where are you going?" I demanded.

"To the garage," he snapped. "I've got work to do."

I let him go…mostly because if I had paraded out of the dorm in my altogether, the rest of the crews' suspicions would be proven irrefutably and credits would change hands. I think Atton had odds and he'd taken enough of my own credits in pazaak; I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of taking Mira's too.

But Bao-Dur's anger bothered me. It bothered me because I didn't know enough about it. I didn't know enough about _him._ For whatever reason—maybe it was all the sex and the intimacy that went with it— I assumed I knew everything about him now, as if that knowledge just came with the package. I was wrong. Very wrong, and as Atton guided us bumpily to the surface of Malachor V, a feeling of terrible apprehension came over me. Not just for being there and what it meant to me, but for Bao-Dur too.

I slipped into my gray robes and jammed my blue-bladed lightsaber into one side of my belt, and Freedon Nadd'sshort one into the other. There was a small mirror on one wall. I examined myself in it, and smoothed down my black hair. My eyes were bright blue but I didn't kid myself that their brilliance was anything but fear lighting them up. I had always thought I looked like somewhat young for my age, but on that day, on Malachor V for the second time, I looked old and tired. _He's right about one thing, _I thought, _this has to end. _I took a deep breath and left the dorm.

Landing on the planet's surface did something to all of us. The crews' energy felt dispersed and weak, like we were all suddenly on our own, each feeling a disparate, urgent call that none of the others could hear or share. Our team was broken and I hated it. But I had to go first, to the Trayus Academy and put an end to Kreia's game. I sought out Bao-Dur before I left.

I felt his anger before I saw him, busily at work in the garage. I didn't know what he was working on, but I didn't like it and I began to feel afraid.

"I can't let go of this anger, General," he said before I could speak, his back to me still. "I feel like I need to do something, to make up for it. To make an _end._" He turned around and looked at me. "Maybe if this place were gone, I could feel like it was over. I could build a future, like you said."

The _Ebon Hawk_ rumbled beneath our feet—the planet was protesting our intrusion and I knew I had to hurry.

"I have to go," I began.

"I wish you wouldn't, General. There is another way."

I shook my head. "Bao-Dur, wait for me. Whatever it is you think you have to do, wait until I return." _Or you'll kill us all, _I added silently. I wasn't asking him, I was ordering him. If he was still going to call me 'General' after all we had shared, then I figured maybe acting like one—like how I now remembered I had been—was the only way to stop him.

He nodded. "Of course, General," he said softly. "I would never do anything to hurt you."

_I love you, too, _I thought, and quickly turned ran down the corridor to the ramp that was already lowered and stepped onto the surface of Malachor V…

I run as fast as I have ever run in my life and still it feels as though I am losing this race.

_Chaos rains down around me. Smoke and ash, and the roiling greenish fog of this place that never relents cloud my vision. Soldiers, _my _soldiers, are running with me, screaming and shouting and firing their weapons, and dying. The Mandalorians are behind us, walking at clipped paces but not running, oh no. They have no need. They are all around us. We aren't running towards safety or base or a transport that will take us away…all of those are blown out of the sky. No, we are running from the Mandalorians directly into another implacable wall of even more of them. We are running to our deaths. _

_I twist my ankle on a rock but Bao-Dur hauls me to my feet so fast, we don't even lose a step. The pain dances up my leg but my will to live conquers it and I banish it to some far-removed place—the same place I had banished the pain of the blaster bolt in my side and the fiery ache in my shoulder. _

_Bao-Dur's face is bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts and my frantic, exhausted, panicked mind deduces that he was sprayed with some shrapnel but I can't remember when. The last few hours have been a blur of madness that is war and I don't know where I am anymore. _

_I _do_ know we are not winning, that we are likely going to die, and I look at Bao-Dur running grim-faced and determined beside me. I decide if I have to die, I want it to be in his arms. Sounds silly, I know, but I don't want the last thing I see in this world to be anything other than his face. _

_Years or hours or minutes later, I can't tell how long, I see a miracle, a mirage. A transport is hovering a meter or two off the ground about a klick and a half in front of us and ragged, bleeding Republic soldiers are scrambling into it. I don't have to say anything to Bao-Dur, he sees it too. We both continue firing our weapons at any Mandalorian who steps into our murky line of view but we find the strength to run faster too. _

_I think we are going to make it—I wave my good arm at a soldier in the transport and he signals back that he sees us. We are nearly there when a pair of Mandalorians step out of the greenish gloom and open fire. By some fluke I feel the sizzling heat of the barrage of blaster bolts that scream towards us, but none of them find my flesh. But Bao-Dur is struck once—twice--three times. He spins around as though someone had grabbed his left arm from behind, and I watch as his elbow all but explodes in a spray of blood and bone. A split second later, a hole the size of his fist opens below the shoulder, and I hear the sickening, puncturing sound of another bolt tearing through his side and then he collapses heavily to the ground. _

_With a scream of rage I fire at the two Mandalorians, heedless of the Republic transport and its soldiers right behind them. Some of my blasts ricochet off that transport, but most of them find their mark, and the Mandalorians fall down dead. _

_Two soldiers have raced out of the transport and, apparently seeing my rank, try to hurry me inside. I order them to take Bao-Dur too._

"_There's no time, General," one says. "He's as good as dead."_

"_He's just a tech," says the other. _

_I slam the butt of my blaster into that man's face, and a several of his teeth make a quick exit from his mouth on a spray of blood. _

"_Pick him up," I say. "That's a fucking order."_

_The first soldier nods and the second nurses his mouth until he sees me looking at him. The two of them lift Bao-Dur who is choking back screams, and carry him to the transport. I cover them, felling three more Mandalorians who dare to try to stop us. _

_Inside the transport, I hold Bao-Dur's head in my lap as a battered and ion-scored med droid flickers its beady yellow eyes over him. His arm is a horror show and I try to keep him from looking at it but he twists his head and what he sees coaxes a scream from his ravaged throat. It is destroyed. There is no better way to describe it. Below the shoulder there is an impossibly huge hole completely devoid of muscle or flesh. Below that, where his elbow should have been, there is only torn skin and jagged shards of bone blown out, like a branch that has been snapped…but not all the way. The transport tilts crazily as it lifts into the air and Bao-Dur's arm moves. I see then that the nest of broken bones concealed the truth, that the lower half of his arm is attached only by a thin piece of skin and tendon._

"_General," Bao-Dur moans. His forehead is broken out in a sweat and his eyes are frantic and wide. His whole face is panicked and drawn tight as a drum with pain. It doesn't look like his face and I itch to slap the med droid that is slowly—too slowly—administering a sedative into Bao-Dur's whole, right arm. Bao-Dur's face relaxes a bit but his eyes are still feverish and alight. "General," he pleads again and I can only hold him and run my hand over his head. One of his horns is digging painfully into my thigh, but I hardly feel it. _

_I channel the Force into him and it is a tiny trickle since I'm out of practice. But his pain eases somewhat until the med droid announces, "His arm will have to be removed."_

_Bao-Dur makes a low, despairing noise and shakes his head in protest. I try to soothe him as best as I can, but I know it's true—his arm is as good as gone. I try to keep him still but Bao-Dur thrusts his good arm under his back and pulls out a hand-held remote device. It is black and has only a few dials and buttons on the face of it. He holds it out to me. I know instantly what it is and I recoil. _

"_Now," Bao-Dur wheezed. "Do it now. Kill them, General. Kill them all."_

_I feel his anger and hate, hot and thick, like his blood on my hands. I remember Revan's words to me, when he first commissioned the generator's construction from Bao-Dur. "If it seems unwinnable, use it. They have to be stopped."_

_They have to be stopped. My own anger flares in me and flares again when I look at Bao-Dur in my lap, in pain, terrified, his arm destroyed. The transport jounces and tilts, the confines are dark, there are other soldiers shouting to one another and I can hear blaster fire rip past us. _This has to end_, I think. _

"_General," Bao-Dur pleads and when I look at him, at his liquid brown eyes, I know what I have to do. _

_But I don't take the remote out of his hands. I don't crush it with the Force, or throw it down the airlock, nor do I even use it to activate mass shadow generator. _

_Instead, I order Bao-Dur to do it. _

_This man, this Zabrak Iridonian in my lap, my soldier, my friend, my lover. He's sick with shock and pain and terror, and the part of me that is small and afraid takes advantage. His anger is a torture to him and I know he would do anything to put it out. He thinks the mass shadow generator will do that for him, and so when I order him to activate it, he does. _

_My world gets blown apart, and even though nothing in the transport has changed, I may as well be somewhere else. I sink back against the wall as the Force tears at me, as the dead howl and haunt me, and the last thing I see before blackness comes is Bao-Dur's face and his guilty tears streaming over a mask of hate and pain. I think, right before oblivion comes, that I would give anything to forget that I made his face look like that. Anything. _

**Trayus Academy, present time…**

Kreia's last breath flutters out of her narrow chest and I take a moment's rest. The walls around me are shuddering and I know I have to get out. I use the Force and feel Atton's energy near—all dark smoke with the occasional brilliant spark of gold. I call him and in moments, the _Ebon Hawk_ is surging upwards from some cavern below and the ramp is down.

I jump in, slam my palm against the ramp console to shut it, and race into the hold. The ship is in chaos.

Visas is collapsed in a corner, blood leaking from under her hood and across her pale face. Mandalore lies motionless on the other side and I think he is dead until the Force tells me otherwise. Mira is missing, dead, I realize, and still down there on that planet, and Mical is pleading with Bao-Dur who stands at the communication console in the center of the hold. The hologram flickering there shows Bao-Dur's remote being threatened by G0-T0. The ship itself is bucking and tilting as Atton tries to maneuver us out of the clutches of Malachor V's never-ending storms.

"Lysia," Mical sighs with relief, as I enter. "Please tell him to stop. He wants to…"

"I know," I snap, and I'm already standing in front of Bao-Dur, between him and the console.

His cheek is cut and there is a bruise forming at his temple, but otherwise, he looks unhurt…until I see his arm has been damaged. The generator around his upper arm is sparking and expelling little tendrils of smoke. The hand mechanism is gone.

He sees me look at the stump of his arm and his smile is tight and forced. "Look familiar, General? Just like before. Only this time, we can end it for good. Malachor V can't take another blast."

"Neither can I," I say. "Neither can you." And now I understand how all his late nights in the garage had been spent. The hologram wavers as though it were an emissary of G0-T0's impatience.

"General Tors," the droid drawls from under the storms of the planet. "You are fortunate that I am ever vigilant, else you may have joined your precious Force a tad sooner than you had intended."

"That's not true," Bao-Dur tells me, his eyes bright and wide. "I won't do it until you give me the order again, General."

"What order?" Mical demands, eyeing the two of us. The _Ebon Hawk_ cants under our feet but the Disciple hardly notices. "I sense something terrible is trying to happen. Lysia, you can't let him do whatever it is he intends to do."

"Shut up!" Bao-Dur cries suddenly, turning on Mical. I've never heard his mild voice so loud or so full of rage. He grips the Disciple by the front of his robes. "_What I intend to do_ is light-years beyond you!"

"The C-Code," Mical gasps, flinching away from Bao-Dur's face which is inches from his own. I don't blame him—with his horns and burning eyes, Bao-Dur must seem a kind of devil. I try to pry his hand loose but he is extremely strong.

"Bao-Dur, let him go," I demand, and then turn that demand into an order. He roughly releases Mical who stands back, gasping and rubbing his throat.

Bao-Dur turns to me and the hate bleeds from his voice until he is almost pleading. "I cannot let go of it, this anger."

"The war is over," I tell him. "There are none left to hate."

He shakes his head. "There is me."

His words are like knives in my heart. G0-T0 is droning a warning and Atton is calling from the cockpit, wondering what in the hell is going on, but all I can see is the last shred of my missing memory falling into place.

"Bao-Dur," I say, "I'm so sorry. I failed you. I failed you so badly that I had to forget you in order to live with myself. But not today. I won't fail you again."

He shakes his head. "I don't understand, General. You didn't fail me. You and I, we saved each other. We saved…"

"Not at the end," I tell him. "At the end I ruined us."

The _Ebon Hawk _rattles and I hear Atton, frustrated and afraid, warn me through the Force that we can't stay hovering over the surface much longer. Mical, eyeing us warily, goes to help Visas, who is stirring, and Mandalore is moaning softly.

Bao-Dur shakes his head the intensity in his smooth voice makes it low and husky. "No, General, it was I who built the generator and it was I who activated it."

"But it was me who gave you the order."

"Yes, do it again, General, and we can end this. Put it all behind us and start over. I want that future you spoke of. I want my hands to be clean."

I shake my head. "There is no blood on your hands, just the blood your guilt forces you to imagine. Whatever crime was committed that day was done by me. I should have never let you activate that generator, Bao-Dur," I say, trying my damnedest not to cry. "Never."

"I'm sorry for what it did to you, General…the wound. But it didn't matter if it was you or me who pushed the button—it had to be done."

"It did," I agree, "but it should have been me. I shouldn't have let you take on that burden—"

"I wanted it," he cuts me off, his voice low and intense. "I hated them so much…"

"Yes, exactly," I whisper.

He steps away from me then and I see him comprehend the depth of his own hatred and how close he is to giving in to it. But not yet. His eyes are pleading, his tone desperate. He doesn't want to hate and is willing to destroy himself if he thinks it would make it go away. "I thought this would make it stop, General," he says gruffly. "Dammit, I still feel like I need to do something, to make up for it."

"You can. We both can," I say. "Bao-Dur, you have dwelled in the past too long and I blocked it from my mind. I don't know which is worse, but now we have a second chance to do it right. We cannot undo history, but we can change the future."

"How?" he asks, his voice a whisper.

I turn to the hologram but my eyes never leave his. "G0-T0. Destroy the remote."

"I thought you'd never ask," the droid drones.

"No!" Bao-Dur cries, but it is without energy and it is too late anyway. I hear a small click, see a burst of light, and then his remote is gone.

There is a silence on the _Hawk_ and then I can feel Mical's sigh of relief more than hear it. He may as well have done it for all of us.

"I'll just put that on your tab, shall I, General?" G0-T0 gloats, ruining the quiet.

I ignore him and turn to Bao-Dur. "That is how we make up for it—by not doing it again," I tell him. "That's how the future begins."

He looks down at me. "But this time, there would have been no death. No Mandalorian army…just an end. I don't understand, General. I don't know why you want Malachor to survive."

"Insurance," I say with a small smile he doesn't return. I take his face in my hands. "So long as it's there, I will remember," I say quietly.

I feel him understand before I see it on his face. He nods almost imperceptibly and pulls me to him with his good arm. He rests his chin on my head and I hear him murmur, "Lysia…"

I smile at the sound, close my eyes and hold him tight as the _Ebon Hawk_ careens out of Malachor V's atmosphere and into clean, open space that stretches on and on into any future Bao-Dur and I decide to make.

**Epilogue…**

I like that Malachor still floats in its blackened little corner of space. I can almost feel it sitting there, pulsing with dark energy and calling to me and any other Force-adept who listens carefully enough. Maybe it would be better if we had destroyed it that day so that none are corrupted by it. But for now, I want it there as a reminder of what once was. I want to feel its presence in my universe so that the past can never slip away, nor can I block it out.

Malachor V will be there so that I never again forget.

THE END


End file.
